Saturday, April 21, 2012

Surprise, Surprise

How many hundreds of times have I heard Chuck Berry songs? At home, in the car, at parties, in the bars, on TV, on the radio, in my head, in any number of a thousand songs that rip off him and his band's 1950s high water cuts. Berry is so monolithic, so legendary, such the prime mover that he barely exists as a flesh and blood man (his low-profile adds to the mystique). His songs aren't really songs anymore, they're blueprints in an archaeological museum; less words, melody, and performance on analog tape than Platonic models. Sheer repetition coupled with mythology have rendered Charles Edward Anderson Berry inhuman, his songs rumors of a man who once existed, or was invented, it's unclear.

How great when a song can still surprise. Tonight Ame and I were driving, listening to a roots show on local public radio, when "Johnny B. Goode" came on. Because I hadn't been looking for it on my Chess box, because I wasn't already bored by its oft-told stories before it played, because my mind was elsewhere (as it turns out, still enjoying the close of the Rolling Stones' "Country Honk," which preceded Berry in the set), because I wasn't burdened with solemn appreciation for the Father, because I didn't start with the reference books, because this wasn't a Sweatin' To The Oldies infomercial at 3 am after last call, because with all great rock and roll we catch up to it a moment after it begins, led first by the rush of blood, then the heart, then recognition in the form of a Yes! and a smile and a shared glance with a friend or a stranger, then a lurch to turn UP the song—none of which we can articulate in language, with sentences, until another moment or two passes—because of this I heard "Johnny B. Goode" for the first time today. Then it was over. Actually, it was over before Chuck got to his first solo, the recognizable notes and style already descending into formula, routine, ancient black and white, archetype, cliché, Happy Days. But for that minute, a bell never sounded so sweetly rung by human hands.

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No Place I Would Rather Be: Roger Angell and a Life in Baseball Writing (forthcoming), Field Recordings from the Inside (essays), This Must Be Where My Obsession With Infinity Began (essays), Conversations With Greil Marcus, AC/DC’s Highway to Hell (33 1/3 Series), Jerry Lee Lewis: Lost and Found, Installations (National Poetry Series), and Sweat: The Story of The Fleshtones, America’s Garage Band. ✸✸ Music Columnist for The Normal School. ✸✸ Five-time "Notable Essay" selection at Best American Essays. ✸✸ Associate Professor of English at Northern Illinois University.

BOOKS

Field Recordings from the Inside

Soft Skull Press

“The collection’s 18 essays do what the best music writing is supposed to do—they make the reader care, regardless of whether they enjoy, or are familiar with, the material being written about; I was mostly willing to follow Bonomo anywhere he wanted to go.” Los Angeles Review of Books

This Must Be Where My Obsession with Infinity Began

Orphan Press

"Joe Bonomo seems to have a Cornell box for each difficult, lyrical moment he remembers. He is a theorist of the self's construction out of the past, full of resistance and the heartbreaking urge to yield." David Lazar

Conversations With Greil Marcus

University Press of Mississippi

"Marcus's knowledge of music and his widespread interests in related topics make this a delight and a real page-turner." The Big Takeover

AC/DC's Highway to Hell

Bloomsbury

"One of the five most important books about AC/DC." Jesse Fink, author of Bon: The Last Highway

Jerry Lee Lewis: Lost and Found

Bloomsbury

"I've read most of the books about him and will now put Jerry Lee Lewis: Lost and Found on the indispensable list. It's one of the best books about the man and his music." Lincoln Journal Star

Installations

Penguin

Sweat: The Story of the Fleshtones, America's Garage Band

Bloomsbury

"Joe Bonomo has written a fine book: a book not only about a band or times passed, but also about the rare virtue of endurance." Nick Tosches

IN TRANSLATION

Jerry Lee Lewis: Lost and Found

Camion Blanc

The Fleshtones: Histoire d'un Groupe de Garage Américain

Camion Blanc

ANTHOLOGIES

The Spirit of Disruption: Landmark Essays from The Normal School

Outpost19

Brief Encounters: An Anthology of Short Nonfiction

Norton

Clash By Night

CityLit Press

The Birth of Rock and Roll

Dust-to-Digital

How To Write About Music

Bloomsbury

The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Prose Poetry: Contemporary Poets in Discussion and Practice